For a year and a half, I continued to write jokes for the President any time Ed called. I have no idea how many of mine the President did or whether they any of them ever worked, but it was still fun to think I had this goofy role at the White House. At one point, the President admitted he didn’t like broccoli, and now that he was the most powerful person in the world, didn’t feel he needed to eat it. Off of that tidbit, I wrote something about Bush’s nightmare being asked to be the Grand Marshall at a Broccoli Festival. Again, coming from the President of the United States of America, this shit kills.
One day, Ed called to tell me that the President was coming to Los Angeles to make a speech encouraging the entertainment industry to refrain from glorifying drugs and violence in TV and movies. He would be speaking during a brunch at the swanky Century Plaza Hotel, and Shelley and I were invited to attend as guests.
Shelley was unavailable that day, but my parents would be visiting from Ohio, so I asked if they could come in her stead. They would appreciate it far more than Shelley anyway, because they had actually voted for the guy. That was fine, but for security reasons, I needed to give the Secret Service Mom and Dad’s Social Security numbers. Turned out, my mother was not Ethel Rosenberg[1] and they both passed muster.
Ed would not be in LA, so he assigned a young communications staffer to meet us at the hotel. The staffer escorted us into a private conference room off the main ballroom where it immediately became apparent that we were out of place. Anyone who was anyone in Hollywood at that time was in that room. Clarence and Toni Skrovan from Chardon, Ohio along with their smart-alec comedian son were thrown into an elegant stew of major studio executives, big time agents, and movie star, Charleton Heston. They were all chatting amiably with one another, leaving my parents and me to talk amongst ourselves. At that time, I had been hosting a minor TV show on the Fox network called Totally Hidden Video. I noticed my boss, Barry Diller, the head of the Fox network standing in one corner of the room. We had never met, but he had to know who I was, because Fox didn’t have that many shows at the time.
He must have been thinking, “What is this little shit doing here?”
Soon, Bush arrived. They set up some American flags at one end of the room and a line formed along a velvet rope to meet and greet the President and have our pictures taken. Near the back of the line, I whispered to my parents that we were standing behind movie producer, Peter Guber and super-agent Michael Ovitz - two of the most powerful people in show business in 1990.[2]
There was an official photographer, but our escort offered to take my mom’s little camera for some additional snapshots. As we got within earshot of the President, I could tell that he too was a bit out of his element. Aside from Charleton Heston, whom he greeted as “Chuck”, an aide had to tell him who everyone else was.
Aide: “This is Peter Guber.”
Bush: “Hello… Peter.”
Aide: “Michael Ovitz.”
Bush: “Hello… Michael… was it?”
Now, it was our turn.
Mom, Dad, and I began walking the fifteen feet or so toward the President. I glanced at my mother, who was trailing slightly behind. She had this wide-eyed expression on her face, taking slow unsteady steps like a Zombie in Dawn of the Dead. The President and his aide watched us approach. The President turned to the aide, who shrugged having no idea who the fuck we were.
The President held out his hand. I took it, told him my name, introduced my parents, and explained that I had written some jokes for him.
His face lit up.
“Oh!” he said, “You know what I need?! I always have to leave these things early. And I need a joke that I can use to make a clean exit. Can you write me some jokes for that?”
We stood there for minutes, far more than any of the other big shots in the room while the President of the United States gave me my assignment. Meanwhile our escort with my mom’s cheapo camera snapped action shot after action shot of our conversation.
The President said, “Send it to the White House. Mark it ‘personal.’ I’ll get it.”
Really?
Later when we were seated for the brunch, we found ourselves in our proper place at the very back of the vast Century Plaza ballroom. Everyone else at that meet-and-greet sat on the dais with the President.
I never did complete the assignment. It was a hard thing to write generically, not knowing the specific event. But I don’t feel too bad because all of those studio execs didn’t fulfill their assignment either and refrain from glorifying drugs and violence in TV and movies.
White House Mess
About a year before we moved from New York to Los Angeles I had booked a commercial for “Bill’s Carpet,” a company that did business in the Maryland/Northern Virginia area. I was cast as the spokesperson in a series of seven spots designed to appear on local late-night television, the kind of low-budget commercial that plays incessantly. The spots, shot in Baltimore, were written to cover all the holidays throughout the year, some specific, some generic, but they all ended with the same tag line, “If you’re not shopping at Bill’s… you’re making a big mistake.”
In the spring of 1990, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa were going to visit the White House. Ed called again to see if Shelley and I were interested in coming to DC to witness the greeting ceremony in the Rose Garden. This was once again, like the LA event, a chance to thank me for writing jokes for the President. We happened to be visiting Shelley’s family in New Jersey and could easily hop on a plane to Washington.
It was a gorgeous day toward the end of May in DC and Ed picked us up at the airport in his red Alfa Romeo Spider, a two-seater convertible sports car that was only a slight step up from his motorcycle with a sidecar. Shelley sat in the passenger seat while I wedged my ass into a small opening behind the seats that left my feet dangling over the side. This was long before I was associated with Ralph Nader, who would have been appalled at how unsafe at any speed my position was.
This was so Ed. He liked convertibles and, of course, motorcycles. One day during law school he was driving a little MG convertible down a two-lane undivided highway in Michigan, but the wind was a little too gusty. Instead of putting the top up, he decided to put his motorcycle helmet on, which happened to be resting next to him on the passenger seat. A few more miles down the road, an oncoming car crossed over the double-yellow center line and crashed into Ed’s convertible – headlight to headlight – catapulting Ed through his windshield and almost tearing it off the car. If Ed hadn’t been wearing the motorcycle helmet, it surely would have killed him. That was so Ed.[3]
For the Gorbachev summit we made it intact to the White House early enough for Ed to give us a tour of the grounds and introduce me to people he knew as the host of Totally Hidden Video, a scrap of intelligence usually greeted with a polite yet uncomprehending nod. This was a show mainly enjoyed by thirteen-year-old boys in middle America, not highly ambitious young politicos toiling long hours in the prefrontal cortex of the most powerful country on the planet.
We took a spot in the crowd at the Rose Garden, straining over everyone’s heads to see the temporary platform where the President and Gorbachev would give their speeches. However, two sleek black Russian-made limousines pulled up the driveway, stopping right behind us, where we had a clear, hi-def close-up of the soon-to-be-deposed Soviet Premier and his wife exiting their vehicles. I was surprised to hear they actually flew their own limos across the ocean for these meetings. Although it makes sense. What are they going to do, have Ed pick them up in his Alfa, Raisa in the front, Mikhail with his feet hanging over the side? And who really takes an airport Super Shuttle if they don’t have to?
“Just so you know, we gotta make a couple stops in Bethesda before we drop you Russkis off at the White House.”
Despite the much-ballyhooed Glasnost and Perestroika of those last days of the Cold War, relations had not thawed quite enough between these two geopolitical rivals for them to trust us to pick them up at the airport in good old American-made limos, potentially outfitted with listening devices and darts loaded with truth serum.
The President and the Premier said some typically bland and forgettable things before the crowd dispersed. Ed introduced us to the head of the comms department and suggested we all go for a bite to eat at the White House “mess,” which suggests a large barracks-type cafeteria where people line up with trays. In reality, it’s a cozy restaurant with about half a dozen neatly clothed tables. No sooner had Ed pointed out that the President hardly ever dines here, than President Bush walked in with an aide. Apparently, he had just finished his short powwow with Gorbachev in a nearby room. The President said, “Hi, Ed,” and I froze, worried he’d identify me as one of his joke writers. I hadn’t completed my assignment from a few months before. What was I going to say?
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. I’ve been very busy pranking unsuspecting Americans on an inane hidden camera television show, I just didn’t have time to smooth your early exits from summit meetings. If you’d have given me a heads-up, I might have suggested you say, ‘Pardon me, Gorby, I gotta split. I got tickets to a Grateful Dead concert and need to drop a tab so I can time my buzz for the drum solo in Truckin!’”
To my relief, the President didn’t recognize me. It probably helped my mom and dad weren’t there to remind him.
After lunch, Ed took us to the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House where the communications team did its work. I was pleased to hear that at the end of the day on Fridays whenever I submitted a page of jokes, they’d pull out a bottle of hooch and sip and read out loud the jokes that were too edgy and inappropriate ever to leave the President’s mouth. Hearing that, I made sure thereafter never to censor myself, because the more satisfying job became not making the President funny but entertaining his troops.
After a pleasant visit, Shelley and I passed outside the walls of the White House and crossed the street just as a heavy truck roared past and honked its horn. The driver leaned out the window, pointed and yelled, “Hey! Totally Hidden Video!” I turned to Shelley and said, “See? These are my people.”
Afterwards, Ed informed me that some of the White House staff he had introduced me to as the host of Totally Hidden Video came up to him later and said, “Hey, was that the guy from Bill’s Carpet?”
[1] Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed in the fifties for being Russian spies. Julius did pass along nuclear secrets, but history has generally considered Ethel an innocent bystander.
[2] Michael Ovitz founded the powerful CAA agency and Peter Guber produced the movies Batman, Rain Man, The Color Purple, and Flashdance among many others.
[3] https://archives.nd.edu/observer/1981-10-01_v16_029.pdf
I always thought Chuck Heston was deserving of so many potshots…
Wonderful piece! So vivid. Simpler, better times.